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instance of inconsistency and self-condemnation among rational beings1?

(2.) I was not aware, until instructed by Dr. Milner, that we Anglicans were all forced to repeat the Creed in our private devotions: but I was aware, that the same argument, if argument it can be called, has been dressed up in more than one of the small Tracts, which are industriously circulated by the Latin Clergy for the purpose of perplexing and proselyting our english common people.

Yet, unless we will consent to be guilty of the inconsistency and self-condemnation which Dr. Milner has very truly characterised as unworthy of rational beings, Mr. Husenbeth, forsooth, adopting the phantasy of the Bishop of Strasbourg, will step forward and assure us that we actually insult him, when we allow indeed his claim to the title of CATHOLIC as a common appellation, but rightly give him as his distinctive appellation the name of ROMANIST or PAPIST or LATIN.

8. Probably, Mr. Husenbeth or some other gentleman of his communion will say, that we Protestants have no right to the title of CATHOLICS:

' End of Religious Controvers. Lett. xxv.

and, in support of the assertion, such an individual will peradventure cite against us the decision of Pope Gregory VII.; that A person is not to be deemed a CATHOLIC, who does not agree with the Roman Church'.

With respect to the decision of this not very conciliatory Pontiff, it will be quite time enough to admit its validity, when the position set forth in it shall have been probatively established: and, with respect to the extraordinary allegation of insult, I may fairly appeal to the whole world, as to the real quarter from which insult proceeds; I may fairly appeal to the whole world, whether it be a greater insult, to style a confessed member of the Latin Church a Romanist and a Papist while his common right in the generic name of CATHOLIC is freely allowed, or to declare roundly that the name of CATHOLIC is peculiar to the members of the Latin Church and that he who disagrees with that particular Church is not in any wise even to be deemed a CATHOLIC.

9. On the whole, the question of insult being now tolerably well settled, since so very unfair an use has been made of a fashion, which origi

1 Quod CATHOLICUs non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanæ Ecclesiæ. Dictat. Greg. VII. in Epist. lib. ii. epist. 55.

nated, I believe, in mere unthinking complaisance childishly conceded to arrogant and offensive importunity: the idle humour of calling the Romanists Catholics, in their own professedly exclusive sense of the word CATHOLIC, ought surely, with one accord, to be systematically discontinued by every Protestant who himself claims to be a member of the Catholic or Universal Church of Christ.

10. As for Dr. Milner, had that gentleman somewhat varied the form of his very ingenious question propounded to a thoughtless Anglican; and had he, with this mere phraseological variation, asked the lowest protestant day-labourer, Whether he was a member of Christ's Universal Church upon earth, the existence of which he professes to believe when he recites the Apostles' Creed: I will venture to affirm, that the answer, instead of being No, would promptly have been YES.

X. For the loan of books which I did not possess, I have to acknowledge my obligation, to my respected Diocesan Dr. Van-Mildert the present Bishop of Durham, and to my valuable friends Mr. Archdeacon Vernon and Mr. Brewster.

For passages extracted or verified from books, to which in my retired situation I had no

venient access, I have to thank my equally valuable friends, Dr. Ellerton, Dr. Bardinel, and Dr. Routh President of Magdalen College.

But, above all, I must pay my due tribute of acknowledgement to my late kind and lamented neighbour Mr. Anstey, without the use of whose library I should have been compelled, simply for want of tools, to decline the task imposed upon me by a respectable layman of my own communion. Before his death, Mr. Anstey, with that feeling of liberality which marked all his actions, converted his loan into a donation: and the goodly tale of folios, some originally my own, others the gift of my deceased worthy friend, which now decorate or crowd my penetrale, has set me very much at ease in respect to inquiries into primitive Antiquity.

If in any measure I have profited from the timely assistance of the aforesaid folios, to God and his Christ be the glory, and to my Mother the Church of England be the benefit?

LONG-NEWTON RECTORY,

Dec. 12, 1829.

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